WORLD RANKINGS

SA takes top African spot in global logistics performance

South Africa is the top performing African country this year in the World Bank’s biennial Logistics Performance Index (LPI) 2014, although it has dropped 9 places from it 23rd world ranking in 2012 to rank 34th this year.

LPI 2014 ranks 160 countries on six dimensions of trade -- including customs performance, infrastructure quality, and timeliness of shipments -- that have increasingly been recognised as important to development. The data used in the ranking comes from a survey of logistics professionals who are asked questions about the foreign countries in which they operate.

Germany took the first place this year, followed consecutively by: The Netherlands, Belgium, United Kingdom and Singapore. In Sub-Saharan Africa, Malawi (73) Kenya (74), Nigeria (75), Rwanda (80) and Namibia (93) were the top five performers excluding South Africa. The Democratic Republic of Congo (159) was the worst performing African country